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Deal Done But War Goes On: No Winners, Only Losers

Behind the Shutdown was a politics of right-wing movement building to raise money and visibility by raising hell. Obamacare had nothing to do with it.

So what was it all about? The Senate deal ending the shutdown and deferring a default until the next time has solved nothing. It is as if we have been given a break for Thanksgiving and the Christmas shopping season until the partisan wars resume. The fighting and arguing have only ceased.

It is unlikely that any of the instigators have learned anything other how a handful of parliamentary savvy kamikazes can bring the government to its knees in the name of a righteous cause—not to bring about change but to try to stop changes they don’t like.

When the Ted Cruz missile against Obamacare helped trigger the melee that closed national parks, limited government services and disrupted the livelihoods of 800, 000 federal employees and the lives of millions, many wondered why when it was clear the extreme right was pursing an unachievable goal.

Senator John McCain warned them that they couldn’t stop the health care reform as did others in their Party. The White House stood firm as did most Democrats. The Tea Party offensive was widely seen as offensive, or as an extortion ploy, an attempt to nullify a law but also a non-starter.

That didn’t stop the true believers. Like the Light Brigade of old, they charged on. Clearly this was a case of ideology uber politics, but behind it was a strategy.

First, they wanted to weaken the Republican center and they did, making Speaker Boehner look powerless and out of control. The best media line about him was that he was “herding cats.”

Second, they wanted to prove that if they don’t get their way, no one else can or will.

They conceded a short term tactical set back but lived to fight another day for longer-term goals. In that way, they can to be “responsible” and continue to enjoy business support.

As some Democrats celebrated, AP reported. “Hold the champagne. Even after lawmakers complete their pending deal to avert a federal default and fully reopen the government, they are likely to return to their grinding brand of brinkmanship – perhaps repeatedly.”

“Brinksmanship” is another word for systematic political warfare. This spasm of rebellion emboldened the fundamentalists among them; it did not weaken them.

Sure, they overreached tactically—if you assume what they were saying was their real agenda.

As former federal regulator William Black explained in an article about their “tactical brilliance but strategic incompetence,” their demands could not be met, but that was never the point.

Black writes,

“the means by which the GOP sought to extort Obama to sacrifice Obamacare made it impossible for Obama to surrender to the Tea Party. The Tea Party was openly threatening to use very short-term extensions of the debt ceiling to repeatedly extort Obama to make enormous, humiliating concessions. This meant that if Obama gave in to their extortion he was dooming his presidency.”

If you assume they knew this, what was the real strategy?

They created a crisis to show that they could create a crisis and milk it as long as they could. It was a way that Junior members of Conrgress could get press attention.

It was also a way of energizing their base, not just politically, but financially.

The Daily Kos commented on Instigator in Chief Ted Cruz’s claim that two million people signed his petition noting that he now has a much larger list of potential donors. In this respect, he sees himself as a winner, not a looser.

He used the crisis to build a media profile with a self-promotional filibuster that excited supporters, whatever it lacked in clarity, logic and analysis.

Noted Felix Salmon, a financial blogger for Reuters:

“The Ted Cruz “filibuster” … served no actual legislative purpose, and at the end of his idiotically long speech, Cruz ended up voting yes on the very bill he was trying to kill. That’s zombie politics, and the problem with zombies is that — being dead already — they’re incredibly hard to kill.”

To him the Tea Party is a zombie army, a movement, not a person — and it’s an aggressively anti-logical movement, at that. So he argues, “You can’t negotiate with a zombie.” (Many Americans identify with zombies these days because of their overexposure on TV and in the movies.)

So, we need to understand, this confrontation was never about logic or even a clear political agenda; it was about movement-building and dominating the discourse through hostage taking to bully and intimidate centrist Republicans and Democrats alike. Most of all, they wanted to snub the Nation’s father figure—President Obama.

Behind their slogans, they were saying to the folks at home: ‘look at me.’

In that respect, the zealots were wildly successful in keeping their faux rebellion going, cheered on by Faux News and the underbelly their visibility attracts, including the guy grinning like an idiot and waving the Confederate flag in front of the White House,

The Atlantic, and many liberal media outlets, have convinced themselves that the “Republicans Shut Down the Government for Nothing” but it was always all about them, not specific goals.

This strategy is, at bottom, about interests, not issues, power, not political advantage.

Republican consultant and former Boehner aide Terry Holt admits:

“The differences are not about objectives, the differences are about tactics. This is the muddle through Congress, We are going to lurch from disaster to disaster until we have the prelude, which is 2014 and then the next presidential election.

There is no incentive for either side to give in, period”

So there you have it, a declaration of permanent war in which, like guerillas in combat, the point is not to hold ground but to keep moving and harass the enemy, keeping them off guard whatever the costs to the economy or the morale of the country.

They expect many Americans will surrender just to have peace, and that’s how a relentless minority can impose its agenda.

The Vietnamese General Giap who died last week at age 102 used similar tactics that were grounded in the idea that war is politics by other means.

Bloomberg interviewed a moderate Republican, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania who explained, “There are no winners in this process, every body loses. The only question you guys are trying to figure out is who loses more? And how long-term the damage will be?”

Former veteran newspaperman Bernard Weiner, now the co-editor of The Crisis Papers tried to explain all this to friends in France, writing:

“Even in the best of times, American politics rarely makes rational sense. But right now is almost the worst of times. From Europe it may appear that you are witnessing recess at a school for naughty, malicious children. While that’s true, we need to enlarge the frame of that portrait to get closer to the whole picture and to assign proper blame rather than just accept the mainstream media’s false meme that “both sides are equally responsible” for the governmental shutdown and debt crisis.”

Come on, it’s tar pit Ted, a real American. He’s the guy this country deserves:)
Dude, if we gotta watch this circus, may as well make it as . . . circusy as possible.
Besides, I think he’s the perfect candidate to usher in the final collapse of this beast.
A simulacra of a candidate to match the simulacra of a political process. It’s perfect.
I hope he runs so I can “vote” for him.

I wanted Cruz to succeed, if only to provide the only proof the loonbats might accept that their ideas don’t work: actual experience.

The stupid f*ckers never know when to take a hint. Let ‘em burn their g*ddamned hands off into bloody charred stumps downto the f*ckin’ wrist.

Liam_McGonagle

As it is, however, the only ‘lesson’ that’s been learned here is not that we need a competent government to provide necessary services, but rather that Wall Street knows how to muzzle its dogs.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that Americans will learn the wrong lesson. God almighty but they’re f*cking stupid.

Juan

“No one has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
H. L. Menken

Liam_McGonagle

Can’t argue with that.

What upsets me most is that some people will latch on to the idea that the only thing that prevented default was lobbying by the banks–which is true; all the coverage is quite open and accepting of this idea.

It’s a matter of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The fact that millions of vulnerable people need a competent government in place just to get along day to day never gets a mention.

What will be reinforced in the public’s mind is the idea that business is the sole functioning institution in society–whereas in fact it is hopelessly inept and incapable of surviving on its own; government today serves primarily to transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

In all this the needs of the workers and the poor are totally ignored.

Juan

Of course the needs of the workers and the poor are ignored. They are seen as an exploitable resource to be sucked dry of anything of value and then discarded. This is essentially the same way the corporate state treats the environment all over the planet. I think what is happening, as Chris Hedges suggests, is that The Empire is now using the same tactics that it has all over the rest of the world domestically. The so called Western Democracies, especially the US, are being deliberately and aggresively third worlded by the the parasitic MBIC.
The outlook is not good. It looks like this monster will eat itself and eventually collapse.

emperorreagan

I guess the ultra rich forget that the stability of the US and its ability to project force are what lets them stay ultra rich.

Juan

When I first read your comment, I read it as ” . . . the ability to project farce.” Ha, ha:)

emperorreagan

Don’t worry – they would still come up with some convoluted argument that the government over-regulated the stove and they wouldn’t have burned their hands if it were left to the free market.

After all, the FDA was created because legitimate manufacturers were no better than the illicit drug dealers of today as far as adulterating or mislabeling the product. Worse, really, because it’s obvious you got bad drugs if you didn’t get high. Yet somehow, in the future, drug manufacturers are going to spring for expensive and long term studies, purity standards, and the like because the magic of the market will make it so (even though it didn’t before)!

doodahman

It would be so nice if progressives had leaders that did what the Tea party reps do for theirs base. Ours just roll over and don’t even bother with the Vaseline.

the red team, the blue team and the tea team
all play in the same professional league
and all work for the same group of owners
the owners may squabble about their agendas
and the players may be loyal to their teams
but they all pull together for the league